Background

A leading electronic manufacturer, with component and assembly plants in the UK and China, had been operating a highly modified version of ManMan for over 15 years.

The software vendor had been merged into a number of different organisations and, as a result, expertise was lost and maintenance costs had soared. The company, therefore, wanted to investigate the benefit of changing its business systems, selecting an appropriate one and implementing it alongside suitable process changes.

Approach

Using a framework for systems specification and decision-making, a project was undertaken that:

• Evaluated the present processes and identified areas of improvement
• Identified the level of benefit associated with the changes and difficulty of gaining the benefit
• Specified the user requirements and used these to develop a new operating model with appropriate process metrics
• Evaluated up to 6 vendor products against the specification and their ability to implement at the client
• Produced a business case justifying the selection, and setting the project metrics for costs and benefits
• Supported the implementation through process re-design, systems configuration and mentoring

The whole project covered 18 months from the initial health check to the sign-off of the implementation in the UK and China.

Benefits

The client benefits were:

• Reduced software maintenance costs of £100,000 with more modern software
• Reduced headcount of 10 people due to improved reporting and analysis tools
• Reduced inventory of £1,500,000 in the 'pre-season' period through better planning and demand management
• Saved over 15% on the original quoted system cost.
• Improved business processes as a result of systems implementation
• Improved customer service